While I worked on the next installment of Human Nature (readings?what school readings?), a friend of mine commandeered my DVD player and watched X-Men: First Class. Toward the end of the film I drifted over and watched the last few minutes. It was in watching it again that I realized the most important question that I hadn't asked before.

Exactly WHY is Magneto wearing a cape at the end? I mean, NOTHING about Erik Lehnsherr's personality suggested he cared at all about how he dressed or that he bothered with artifice. The helmet I get but why the cape? Did someone suggest to him that now as head of the Brotherhood he should get himself a cape to look all the more imposing? Because that really backfired as the cape just robs him of the little dignity that ridiculous helmet left him. Granted, it's not as ridiculous as the headgear featured in Thor but still. The cape does not help.

I feel like it was a bit too jarring to go from Lehnsherr in his usual turtlenecks to suddenly sporting a freaking cape. The movie overall seemed to work so hard to pull you away from the costumes made famous by the comics that suddenly inserting one at the end felt a bit out of character.

Well to be fair, they actually brought the costumes back to the original ones compared to the other movies - hence the blue/yellow suits as opposed to the black/greys favoured in the others. But yeah, it's totally a jarring and OOC thing to have Erik suddenly dressed like that - if they continue it in the next movie I'll be frankly shocked (it would definitely affect his ability to be taken seriously as a villain/anti-hero/Charles' frenemy/whatever). But I admit I'd like to see the original Mystique costume back, though considering the movie's preference for her traipsing about naked, I doubt it...